ntt@dciem.UUCP (Mark Brader) (02/08/84)
It is well known that the first US attempt at an interplanetary probe,
Mariner 1, went off course and had to be destroyed due to an error in
its programming or data. I have seen several versions of what the actual
error was, all contradictory, none with sufficient context to seem really
authoritative. Here are two of the versions:
- A "-" was accidentally omitted somewhere. (Arthur C. Clarke gives
this one, and calls it "the most expensive hyphen in history".)
- A "," was turned into a "." in a FORTRAN DO header, thus converting
it into an assignment statement under FORTRAN parsing.
Is there anyone on the net who really and certainly knows what happened?
Either someone who was there, or someone who knows someone who was there,
or someone who has a copy of an article written at that time by someone
who was there?
If you're not in those categories but have helpful information, reply by mail.
Thanks in advance, Mark Brader
uucp: {decvax, linus, watmath, ihnp4, duke, ...} !utzoo!dciem!ntt